This invention relates to a hand and wrist protective device. More specifically, this invention relates to an improved hockey glove for protecting the player's wrist, hand, and fingers, regardless of whether the hand is clasped or opened. Additionally, the hockey glove prevents the user's thumb from being hyper-extended backward.
The sport of hockey is hard on the player's hands, wrists, and thumbs. Hockey players routinely strike their opponents with their hockey sticks. A player may intentionally strike an opponent to distract him from the puck, or unintentionally during the follow through of a shot on goal or pass to another player. Whether intentional or unintentional, the force of these strikes can break or otherwise injure the opponent's hand, wrist, or fingers.
In addition, hockey players are often hit on the hands, wrists, and fingers with flying pucks. A regulation hockey puck is made of hard rubber one inch thick, 3″ inches in diameter, and weighing between 5 and 6 ounces. A proficient hockey player can shoot a puck upwards of 100 miles per hour. The force of such a shot can break the hand, wrist, or fingers of a player struck by the puck. The force of a flying puck can also hyper-extend the player's thumb backward, causing injury or breakage.
Hockey players also injure their thumbs when they fall to the ice or come into contact with other hard surfaces such as the boards surrounding many hockey rinks. A falling player may use his hands to break the fall or lessen the impact of hitting the boards. The player's thumb may bend back at the hand, hyper-extending the thumb and causing injury or breakage.
Some widely-available hockey gloves use padding on the upper side of the finger stalls to protect the user's fingers from impact injury. To allow finger flexure, these hockey gloves are hinged at the knuckles in one of two ways. Some of the prior art hockey gloves use a plurality of pads along the length of each finger. These pads are attached to the glove body, but not to each other. When the user's hand is clasped, the pads move independently of each other, creating a gap between the pads. Other commercial prior art hockey gloves use a single pad overlying each finger. Limited finger flexure is obtained by notches cut partially through the padding at the location of each knuckle. These notches open when the hand is clasped, reducing the amount of padding over the knuckles. Constructed in these fashions, the commercial prior art hockey gloves offer limited or no protection to the user's knuckles when the hand is either partially or fully clasped. The gap between the pads widens as the user's hand is clasped, exposing the user's knuckles to being struck by a hockey stick or puck.
The commercial prior art hockey gloves also use padding to protect the user's thumbs. These gloves generally use a single pad that runs the length of the user's thumb. The pad is attached to the glove at the base of the thumb. The user's thumb resides in a stall that is adjacent to the padding and connected to the padding at the tip of the thumb. Flexure of the thumb is allowed because the thumb stall moves independently of the padding. Constructed in this fashion, the commercial prior art hockey gloves protects the user's thumb from impact on the outer or thumbnail side, but offers no protection against backward hyper-extension of the users' thumb caused by impact on the inner side of the thumb stall.
The need remains in the sports industry for a hockey glove that will protect the user's knuckles from injuries when the user's hand is open or partially or fully clasped and protect the user's thumbs from hyper-extending backward. The primary objective of this invention is to meet this need.